OMG! Another week . . . without writing! Or Video games or anime marathons, so pros and cons! My free time has been dedicated to . . . comic books! Yes, I am still cataloguing my comics for sale and it has been a tedious process.

I’m hoping it's going to be worth the time and effort. I’m not expecting to make bank with what I have but to get something back would be nice. Having more space again would be nice as well. Good news is I’m almost done with all the indie publishers. And wow, do I have a lot. All I have to do is the Dynamite comics . . . which takes up four boxes worth.

So, Dynamite, yeah, I picked up a lot of that due to the covers. Most of the covers have one of the three things: 1) The comic is based on a property I like. 2) The cover art was done by my favorite comic artist Alex Ross. 3) A Pretty Lady is on the cover.

Off the top of my head, an example of number one is “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly” which I consider the best Western movie ever made. I like Westerns overall and found a lot of Lone Ranger comics. I like vintage pulp heroes like the Shadow and Green Hornet and there are plenty of comics of rebooted vintage pulp heroes the Dynamite tried. And I am a Valiant Comics stand and after they went bankrupt in the 90s (long story, talk for another day) they lost the rights to the Gold Key comics characters they owned, such as Solar, Magnus, and Turok. And Dynamite now owns these characters and tried to reboot them with “Gold Key Universe”. These are just a few titles from Dynimate that I hoarded and never got around to reading. But I’m done laying on them like a dragon on a pile of gold. And I could always find a trade paperback, which Dynamite pretty much does for all of its series.

Number two, Alex Ross, the man’s talent could be an article in itself, so I will save that for a nerd rant in the future. But Dynamite employed this man and they got a lot of art out of him. Across multiple titles. And rarely, rarely, was his art also in the comic. Just the cover. And Ross was heavily involved in the reimagining of the oldschool pulp heroes. Franchises called “MASKS” and “Super Powers” were created with these pulp heroes and I believe Ross was an adviser or producer on the whole thing. His art is on most of the covers, most that I found. Of course, Dynamite is notorious with variant covers, so other artists have also made covers of the same issues as Ross had done. But Ross was my choice and I have a lot of issues with his cover art. Also, Ross did covers of reboots of Jack Kirby’s characters, Alex Ross reimagining Jack Kirby characters, that is like comic geek inception right there. And as much as I enjoy the pretty pictures, I kept one series and have to let go of the rest. There is just too much and frankly, I could hunt down an art book of Alex Ross’ work with Dynamite.

And such a book exists, called “The Dynamite Art of Alex Ross” and it's fairly affordable for such stellar art.

And here we come to number 3. Yeah, number 3. I am a sucker for pretty ladies on comic book covers. And Dynamite had a lot of series with very, very pretty ladies on the covers. Barbarella, Bettie Page, Chastity, Painkiller Jane, Pantha, Sheena, and Dejah from Warlord of Mars. But! Two ladies are so prevalent in my collection that they both have their own box. Red Sonja and Vampirella. Red Sonja’s box is at 151 issues and Vampirella’s box is at 143. Almost 300 comics between these two ladies alone. A fit barbarian redhead in a chain mail bikini and a hot goth vampire-alien princess in a thong bikini. I shake my head in hindsight. I get it, I know what I like and sometimes I hyperfixate on stuff. Okay, I hyperfixate a lot and this whole comic book collection is an example of such a hyperfixation that has become a pain in my burnt butt. And I am selling a lot of the pretty ladies . . . that came out wrong, let me try again. Selling a lot of comics with pretty ladies on the covers. That sounds better, jeez, I have so many comics that I cannot even think straight.

So that is what is on the horizon for the cataloguing of comics. And keep in mind, I have yet to touch base with the Marvels and DCs I have. Yeah, that will be for another day.

I probably should touch on what I have finished since the last blog. I had a box of image comics, both 90s and current stuff and frankly, I was only collecting them out of morbid curiosity. A lot of the 90s Image stuff is style over substance and is so concentrated 90s that it hurts to look at. It is hard to believe that the same upstart publisher that a bunch of rogue marvel artists started would be still active but here we are.

And then I have a whole box of Malibu Comics, mostly their superhero line called ULTRAVERSE! Why? I really don’t know. I’ve tried to read a few of these comics and they are not pleasant and not interesting. The “heroes” are so anti they might as well be villains. The flagship hero, a Shazam allegory called Prime has a kid get alien powers and becomes a buff Superman that is called Prime and . . . it’s not fun, quite frankly. At least Shazam is fun but Prime gets . . . uncomfortable. Go Google it, it's weird and gross on many levels. Then there is Mantra, about this warrior who dies and reincarnates in pursuit to defeat an evil overlord and his current life is as a woman with magical powers. And . . . well, the comic is from the 90s. There are not going to be any award winning trans-narratives in this, which the idea has such potential for modern day gender identity stories. I rolled my eyes and sighed a lot during issue one of Mantra. And then there is Mantra’s outfit . . .

Even I have my limits and I’m still not sure what possessed me to collect any of the Malibu comics. Well, there were several factors. Some artists I like were involved with Malibu so I assumed that could be the reason. I was also thinking of starting my own comic book review series and making snarky fun at the Malibu stuff and other 90s schlock. But, ultimately, I was collecting these comics out of morbid curiosity. The 90s were a hell of a time for the comic book industry. So much . . . junk . . . and I collected that junk. And I only collected this junk because it was dirt cheap. I could not imagine spending $2.50 per issue back in the day on this junk.

Malibu was bought out by Marvel and no one has tried to reboot the ULTRAVERSE characters. And I am not surprised. A lot of the junk from the 90s is lying in a mass grave of trends of the past. I honestly think the likes of Cable, Deadpool, Savage Dragon, and Spawn are the only survivors of that war torn battlefield of muscles on muscles, gritting teeth, chicks doing contortionist poses, and confusing action scenes with little substance in between.

I love Valiant, I think the publisher has some interesting OG IPs. But even Valiant has a lot of 90s junk that I just could not convince myself to keep. After they got bought out by Acclaim (yes, the video game publisher) the quality of Valiant just succumbed to the 90s. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and even though I did not grow up with most of this stuff I had collected, it was on the news rack in the grocery store and my curiosity lingered for decades. Well, now I know and know is half the battle. The other half is letting this junk go.

Which, I should get on with the comics while I have the time. Eventually the cataloguing of these comics will be done and I can sell them and move on to the next project. What will that project be? Maybe writing, finally, darn it! 😆

Good Luck and read some GOOD comics,

—BUCK

PS: So, while looking over the Valiant comics, debating what to keep and what to axe, I found this ad for the Warlock video game a lot. Yes, the horror movie from 1989 that I never saw got a video game.

It was an Acclaim video game. I started to wonder if Acclaim bought Valiant only to advertise their crappy video games. Also to use the IPs to make crappy video games. And yes, Turok comes from this whole thing and it’s probably the pinnacle of all of Acclaim’s games. Actually, any Acclaim stands out there? What games of theirs did you enjoy . . . or hate . . . or both?